Green Synthesized Silver Nanoparticles Immobilized on Activated Carbon Nanoparticles: Antibacterial Activity Enhancement Study and Its Application on Textiles Fabrics

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Paper entitled “Green Synthesized Silver Nanoparticles Immobilized on Activated Carbon Nanoparticles: Antibacterial Activity Enhancement Study and Its Application on Textiles Fabrics” meets the necessary standards for publication in this journal.

In this paper were described the approaches regarding to enhance the antibacterial activity of AgNPs synthesized from silver nitrate (AgNO3) using aloe Vera extract.

 Paper comprehensively describes the results of the investigation of the role of ACNPs in enhancing the antibacterial activity of AgNPs towards E. coli and S. aureus bacteria especially when it was superimposed onto the cotton and polyester fabrics. 
Also were presented the application of these materials.

The work is concise and clearly writen.

The paper meets the necessary standards for publication in Molecules Journal.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review and valuable comments on my paper submitted to Molecules Journal with ID no. molecules-1242415.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

1) The technical content is good.

2) English should be edited

3) Durability in textile materials should be evaluated.

4) Cytotoxicity should be studied.

 

Author Response

Comment 1: The technical content is good

Author response: Thank you very much.

 

Comment 2: English should be edited

Author response: Thank you very much. English already edited, according to the English word correction software just a few words are not correct in writing such as E.coli,  and S.aureus; and I have corrected them to become E. coli, and S. aureus.

Comment 3: Durability in textile materials should be evaluated.

Author response: Thank you very much. Yes, it is very important to do when we would like to produce antibacterial textiles commercially on an industrial scale. However, in this paper we would like just to test whether the synergistic effect of antibacterial activity of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) still ok when it was immobilized on the activated carbon nanoparticles and subsequently on the textile fabrics; and the fact showed it was ok as comprehensively described in the associated paper. 

 

Comment 3: Cytotoxicity should be studied.

Author response: Thank you very much. It is a very good suggestion. I am interested in doing that in the next research. However, in this research, we would like to focus investigation firstly just on the enhancement of the antibacterial activity of silver nanoparticles using porous material of activated carbon nanoparticles. 

Reviewer 3 Report

The article “Green Synthesized Silver Nanoparticles Immobilized on Activated Carbon Nanoparticles: Antibacterial Activity Enhancement Study and Its Application on Textiles Fabrics” contains interesting results and the reviewer recommends its publication after major revisions as follow:

• Where says “While the successful of AgNPs-ACNPs incorporation and its particles sizes analysis were performed by using Tunneling Electron Microscope (TEM) (line 22-23).” The technique is incorrectly named. Please replace Tunneling with Transmission. Line 91 please correct it. Check all the text.
• Every average has to be followed by a numeric standard deviation. This refers to the average sizes of the nanoparticles with or without the activated carbon. Please rewrite all average sizes of nanoparticles throughout the article including the abstract.
• Line 119 “Finally, it was then stored in a dark bottle for five days at room ” Why was it stored for 5 days? Did you follow the formation of the nanoparticles by TEM or UV/VIS?
• Line 133 “About 10 mL aqueous colloidal AgNPs produced from section 2.2 were mixed cor-“ Please correct the numbering of the section
• Line 165 “Besides those, a little bit of culture stock of ” Please refrain from using such expressions of “a little bit”. Indicate volume used.
• Line 175 “discs of 1 Cm in diameter were wetted with the fabricated”. Please correct the spelling in this line and through the text.
• Figure 2: a) scale of the TEM images is not clear to this reviewer. Please re-do it, such as the scale in all images is clear to the reader. Image 2 h) is confusing with the arrow at the top of the chemical structure. Please remove it. Please present sizes with standard deviation values? How many particles have you counted? And how have you done it? Which software have you used? There are spelling mistakes in the caption of the picture
• Figure 3c) and d), confusing with that circles. Please re-do it.
• There are several typos in the text. Please re-check english.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review, comments, and suggestions on my paper submitted to Molecules Journal with ID no. molecules-1242415.

Suggestion 1: Please replace “Tunneling” with “Transmission”.

Response: Thank you, I have already replaced that.

 

Suggestion 2: Please include the numerical deviation standard for every average size of carbon nanoparticle.

Response: Thank you, I have calculated the standard deviation of the particle size of AgNPs, ACNPs, and AgNPs-immobilized ACNPs using Excel-Microsoft software based on the several particles selected randomly of its SEM images completed with a bar marker of the particles sizes and then writing them on the throughout the text as shown in line 27-28, 263-269, 305-312, 349, 376-379, Table 1.

 

Question 1 : Line 119, Why was it stored for 5 days? Did you follow the formation of nanoparticles by TEM or UV/Vis?

Response: Thank you. Because 5 days is the most stable brown color of the silver nanoparticles formed. The generated brown color of fewer than 5 days storage was still changed from bright brown color to a dark-brownish one. Yes, we followed the color change by UV-Vis spectrometer, but I think no need to display it all in this paper because I did not discuss why the brown color change from day to day until 5 days of storage to get stable color.

 

Suggestion 4: Line 133, please correct the numbering of the section.

Response:  Thank you. I have corrected the numbering of the sections from 2.2 (no match) to 2.4 (match), and from 2.1 (no match) to 2.3 (match).  Thus, the sentence change becomes “About 10 mL aqueous colloidal AgNPs produced from section 2.4 were mixed correctly with 90 mL aqueous colloidal ACNPs had produced from section 2.3.

 

Suggestion 5: Line 165, please refrain from using such expression of “a little bit”. Indicate volume used.

Response: Thank you. I have changed it becomes “about 1 mL”.

 

Suggestion 6: Line 175, “disc of 1 Cm in diameter were wetted with the fabricated”. Please correct the spelling in this line and through the text.

Response: Thank you. I have changed Cm becomes cm in through the text.

 

Suggestion 7:  Figure 2 a-f, please re-do it all, and remove Figure 2 (h). There are several typos in the text. Please re-check English.

Response: Thank you. I have improved it all including removed Figure 2(h). I have checked all typos in the text and made it correct using free online Grammarly software.

I would like to kindly inform you, the order of several lines in the text has changed since the doing correction. The blue color texts are the additional sentences that should be written there to make the sentences more meaningful.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the modifications. The manuscript has been sufficiently improved to warrant publication in Molecules.